


Only his heritage

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Did Ramsay corrupt Reek, or did Reek corrupt Ramsay?</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Written for LiveJournal's dark_fest. Prompt was <i>Ramsay/Reek, a descent into madness</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only his heritage

Mother was weeping. Mother often wept, locking herself away while he was left alone. The sound was ugly, tiresome, but never went on for long. The bottles of dreamwine that she drank saw to that, bottles that piled under her bed, that rolled to and fro when Ramsay, bored, snuck into her rooms, rummaging through her drawers for something amusing, but never finding much save a slim packet of letters, bound with a faded ribbon, parchments stained with pink wax, lined by a tight, even hand. If he could read, he would have done, but as such, they lost his interest and were tossed aside. Once he found a half-used bottle of perfume and poured it on himself, but it had only earned a beating. The blows and harsh words were more attention than he usually saw, so he did not, deep down, really mind it. 

Ramsay sometimes amused himself by skinning cats that wandered into the mill. They were useful, keeping the rats at bay that gnawed and burrowed in the grain that kept him fed and clothed, but they were more interesting prey than the rodents, who were small and weak. Cats fought back with fangs and claws, and even when his hands and arms were bloodied, it did not matter. For Ramsay was bigger than they were; he wielded a blade, albeit rusty, and their hissing and struggling amused him. 

He’d always liked something with a bit of fight in it. 

*

One day, he’d grabbed one of the other village children, the baker’s boy, marring his finer clothes, pressing his dagger to the other child’s throat. Although he hadn’t screamed, he’d whimpered when Ramsay drove the edge closer, grazing the skin enough to draw blood. The sight of it against the pale throat, and how it had trickled onto the tunic, staining the fabric, had excited him. Ramsay did not recall ever having felt such anticipation before, and when his breath quickened, and his hands faltered, he’d felt, aside from the pleasure, a feeling of belonging. _This is right_ , he thought, as he pushed his captive to the ground, sitting on his belly, still baring the old steel. But the baker’s boy had ceased his struggles, pressed into the mud by Ramsay’s weight. Every once in a while, a muffled sob escaped him, but that was just as easy to ignore as his mother’s were. 

When the boy wet himself and the urine spread to Ramsay’s own clothing, soaking it, he struck the boy, cutting his lip, bloodying him further. It wasn’t fury he felt, more of a dull rage, a disappointment in the frailty of his captive. 

When he stood up, releasing him, the baker’s boy didn’t move. He stared up at Ramsay, face streaked with tears and snot, lip trembling. 

“Go on,” Ramsay muttered. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

He stayed there on the ground, watching the boy run off. It would have been too easy, and the thought disgusted him. 

*

When Reek came, his mother stopped weeping. _Reek was going to be their servant_ , she said. _Reek was going to help Ramsay learn how to be a gentleman. Reek was a gift from Ramsay’s real father._

None of it really interested Ramsay. He’d never given much thought to his father, accepting life with his mother as bare fact. It was simply the way things were, and he was satisfied with it, as long as he was free to do as he pleased. 

But Reek changed that. At first, Ramsay was disgusted by the man. He was tall and slender to the point of emaciation, with hooded eyes, lank hair, and a horrible stench about him. The other villagers shrunk from him when he passed, and if he had not smelled as he did, his other qualities would likely have set their teeth on edge. His voice was soft as a whisper, a trick he claimed to have learned from his lord, and his skin was pale as a corpse. In time though, Ramsay came to accept him as another matter of consequence, like the peeling paint on their cottage, or the way that parents clutched their children, pulling them back protectively, when they encountered him in the streets. 

He did not love Reek (he did not love Mother either, for that matter), but he liked talking with him, or rather, listening to him. He liked the things that Reek said when he came to his bed late at night, in the dark, and he liked the sound of his voice, measured, refined. 

“You’re the son of a great lord,” Reek whispered, rubbing his hands together. Ramsay lay back, listening to the papery sound that it made, and how it mixed with the words. “One day, you’ll come into your name, mark my words, just bide your time and he’ll come around. He’ll have to, his wife birthing child after child, all of them dead.”

Ramsay wondered who this lord was. He’d never given such things much thought, but if he _was_ to rule one day, he wanted to know how far he would be able to go. 

“My lord of Bolton bade me make you fit to rule,” Reek whispered, his dry hand stroking Ramsay’s cheek, “and rule you shall. It’s only what you deserve, boy.”

Ramsay smiled when he heard the name. _Bolton_. He’d seen Bolton men in the village, hard faces, pink cloaks spotted with red, bearing the flayed man on their chests. And he’d heard tales of the Dreadfort, tales from the other children when they didn’t know that he was near, know that he was listening, stories of skins stretched on the walls to dry, chambers deep under the ground where prisoners wept and pleaded, blood running like the river that flowed past the castle walls. 

He imagined himself standing beside a tall, faceless father, both of them wielding blades, both of them dripping scarlet. When Reek climbed in the bed beside him, he pretended that he heard screaming, and when Reek’s hands sought him out, he didn’t push him aside, but allowed him to clutch him in the darkness.

He no longer minded the stench.

And after all, a servant’s job is always to please his master. 

*

Reek took him hunting when he was of age, handing him a crossbow. Ramsay turned it over in his clumsy hands. He’d never seen anything so fine. Even the merchant’s sons had rough-hewn homemade weapons, not elegantly carved pieces with leather grips and arrows fletched with silver feathers. He smiled at Reek, knowing that he’d likely bungle the thing and miss the prey, but all the same, he knew that it was only a matter of time before he became accustomed to it. 

They rode through the sparse forest north of town. Ramsay wondered if they’d crossed into Bolton lands, but he said nothing as they forwent deer and a solitary boar, snuffling about in the undergrowth for its dinner. Reek was quiet as well, his eyes distant and his face blank. It seemed as if they traveled for miles, the sun baking down on them, when Reek halted his horse and pointed. Ramsay’s eyes followed, and his lips creased in a smile as he beheld the woman, stark naked, bathing in a shallow stream that cut through a clearing. 

She was young and firm, her breasts full and high, dark hair streaming down her back. As she cooled her flesh, she sang a wordless song. The noise of the water masked the sound of Reek’s dismount, and as he crept toward her, he beckoned Ramsay to follow. Follow he did, brandishing his new weapon, grinning in wonderment at what this new game was, and staring unabashedly at his first glimpse of a woman. 

She started at last when Reek spoke. “Such a fine day, milady,” he said, leering at her. “And such a pretty thing you are.” At his voice, her song died in her throat, strangled, and her hands scrabbled frantically to cover her chest, her groin. But she gave up and reached for her dress, crumpled on the riverbank. 

“Oh, there’s no need for that now,” Reek said, his voice like velvet. Ramsay remembered that tone from their nights sharing a bed and as he stepped out from behind the other man, he continued. “Come here, child.”

She did, lip trembling. “These are Bolton lands,” she said, a bit of fire in her gaze, although her voice wavered, “and you have no right.”

Reek laughed. “Right we have, and right we shall take. What right have you? My lady,” he sneered, drawling the words to mock her. 

“I work in Lord Bolton’s kitchens,” she said softly. “Cook let me have the day. I was doing nothing. Nothing,” she said, as tears started in her eyes. 

Reek turned to Ramsay. “Take her. She’s yours, after all then.” So he handed off the crossbow and approached the woman, girl really. As she darted a glance round him, Reek spoke, training the arrow on her. 

“That would be unwise, milady. Now there’s a girl. Get on the ground for his lordship.” And she obeyed, her tear-streaked face full of hatred. He turned to Ramsay, smiling. “I think you know what to do, boy.” 

He did of course, pinning her to the ground with one hand, and reaching in his breeches with the other. He was already stiffening, had been ever since they’d come upon her shame, had hardened when Reek had frightened her. It was far too easy of course. She lay in the mud, eyes burning as she stared at his face, refusing to break, to cry out, as he forced himself upon her. And it was over far too soon for Ramsay’s liking, just a quick burst of pleasure and then nothing but sticky frustration as he spent himself inside of her. 

Reek pulled him aside, climbing atop her in turn, but it was different when Reek laid with her. She fought back, her struggles weakening as he took her, her cries intensifying as her body stilled, then dying away until there was nothing but Reek’s harsh breathing to break the silence of the woods. When he pulled away, his face was streaked red, and it patterned his clothing, soaking it. One crimson hand held a knife, which he let fall to the ground beside the body. He trembled, shoulders shaking with laughter, and Ramsay could not help but join in. It was all a great joke really. 

“She was your father’s,” Reek said, clapping a hand on Ramsay’s shoulder. “She was, in turn, yours.” 

Ramsay put his hand on top of it, the blood smearing onto his skin in turn. “Ours,” he said softly, a curious expression on his face. 

Reek did not stop him when he pressed his lips to his, nor did he protest when Ramsay pushed him gently to the ground. He kneeled in front of him, staring up at him expectantly. 

Ramsay’s breeches were still unlaced, although he had not softened. 

“You know what to do,” he said, in what he imagined where the high tones of a lord. 

“I am but a humble servant,” Reek replied, bending to his task, taking him in his mouth, grasping his thighs with those slender hands, blood marring Ramsay’s riding leathers. 

Ramsay’s hands were in Reek’s hair, his eyes closed as the other man pleasured him. As he submitted to him. 

“You’re mine,” he whispered. “Mine.” And when he came, it was nothing like what had happened with the serving girl. It was far more. 

Reek pulled him down in the leaves, hands on his shoulders, and kissed him full on the mouth. Ramsay imagined that he could taste the girl, could taste himself. It pleased him. 

“My Reek,” he said, laughing. 

“My lord,” Reek answered.


End file.
